To add one more thing that I haven't noticed in the other discussions on this board: Has anyone seen the IQ tests in Africa?

I used to do a little community work in Namibia (so I can't speak for any of the other countries), and I know that the IQ tests in this country were administered in English. From my experience with the locals, they all had decent English (for most of them, English was either a second or third or fourth or fifth language!!), but it was nothing that would have allowed them to ace some standardized test. Asking a Namibian to take an IQ test in English would be equivalent to asking some American kid who had taken two years of Spanish in high school to take his IQ test in Spanish. I doubt he would have had a very high IQ score.

Now if the Namibians had someone give them IQ tests in one of their 14+ native languages, I bet the average would come out on par with any other racial group's. Of course, since it's virtually impossible to develop an IQ test for a language that only had a writing system developed in the last 20 years or so, I doubt that's going to happen.

In my time in Namibia, I met exactly zero people who spoke only one language. In America, I don't even keep count.

Good point. There's a long history of administering IQ tests to people in their second language and then declaring them unintelligent because they got a low score. This happened to many European immigrants in the early 20th century, and it conveniently confirmed the bigotry against them that Americans already had.

to ekdysiast:

If only it were so...Wouldn't it be nice if IQ tests were that unfair? Yet the clever scientists came up with a way to test reaction time without any use of language. Electric bulbs light up and the test subject presses a button. That's all.

freepeoplearenotequal:

to ekdysiast:

If only it were so...Wouldn't it be nice if IQ tests were that unfair? Yet the clever scientists came up with a way to test reaction time without any use of language. Electric bulbs light up and the test subject presses a button. That's all.

What does a reaction time test have to do with IQ tests? Are you trying to claim that IQ tests have no written languages in them? Only light bulbs?

It's not only language. The IQ tests also use a lot of concepts that are culturally dependent. Questions like 'If a train is traveling at 12 mph....'. To somebody who has never seen a train before- that must be pretty abstract. They only have a vague concept of a train as a moving cart. Not to mention he has no concept of something like a speedometer. So the concept of measured speed is just an abstraction.

Strange, I didn't know IQ was just reaction time.

freepeoplearenotequal:

to ekdysiast:

If only it were so...Wouldn't it be nice if IQ tests were that unfair? Yet the clever scientists came up with a way to test reaction time without any use of language. Electric bulbs light up and the test subject presses a button. That's all.

RA Fischer looked for measures of intelligence in such tasks as reaction time, the ability to judge the relative weight of two objects, ratings by teachers and peers. This was before the dominant groups in society decided that intelligence was best measure by tests of a narrow range of cognitive abilities, with the predominant questionaire developed out of a test the late 19thC French put together to measure classroom accomplishment.

It's not as simple as Saletan presents it.

very good point, this is the crux of my objection to these tests...the generalized tests fail miserably in determining specific intelligences (duh!) ...Many Africans speak 4 or more languages, maybe the intelligence tests should isolate that (linguistic intelligence) would we be right in asserting their superiority generally if it were found they vastly outperformed other "races" in this area? Again, the whole thing underscores the abysmal state of this "science" which really hasn't improved in rigor in over 100 years! If there is any proof that it is suspect that is it!

There are many IQ tests that have little or no cultural or educational content. The distributions among population groups remain the same. The most salient point is that IQ test scores have a higher correlation with educational and other life outcomes than do other individual and demographic factors. That's why they are used. It's also why we should take lower average IQs among blacks and Hispanics into account in developing strategies to give them equal opportunities in life, given that our society puts a huge premium today on intellectual ability.

When IQ tests are given to English-speakers, they do have language questions. American non-Asian minorities perform much better on those the sections that involve cultural information. They perform worse on those sections that have nothing to do with language but rather shapes and puzzles.

IQ has everything to do with reaction time. No matter how it is administered, the goal is to get "g" factor--something akin to general speed of information processing.

freepeoplearenotequal:

When IQ tests are given to English-speakers, they do have language questions. ...

OK- you just conceded to the OP's point then. When english (or french) IQ tests are given to Africans- they are being tested in a foreign language. Of course they would perform worse. Hence the tests are biased against non-native speakers of whatever language the tests happen to be in.

posty:

Strange, I didn't know IQ was just reaction time.

If so some our our top athletes must be fucking geniuses!

I am sure that even a mediocre major league batter has reaction time far superior to mine. I can only imagine the genius of someone with the reaction time required to win a Formula 1 race or Grand Prix Motorcycle event!

Earth to Moon:

English-language IQ tests are not the same as tests given to non-English speakers. Why would you think contemporary scientists so unsophisticated? Why would they want to make a "test biased against non-native speakers of whatever language the tests happen to be in?"

There are many IQ tests that have little or no cultural or educational content.

I would very much like to see one of these, E. O'Neal. Could you post a link?

freepeoplearenotequal:

Earth to Moon:

English-language IQ tests are not the same as tests given to non-English speakers. Why would you think contemporary scientists so unsophisticated? Why would they want to make a "test biased against non-native speakers of whatever language the tests happen to be in?"

OK- so what language are they in then? Are they translated into those myriads of african languages, including the ones that have no written form? And if they are translated- how do you know the results are comparable with the english language tests? How about people who are illiterate or barely literate? How are they supposed to read the tests? How do you ask a question involving 'trains traveling at 12mph' in a Bushman language when they probably don't even have a word for 'train' or 'hour'?

to RobMac,

Google "Culture-Fair IQ test"

Such tests rely mostly rely on images.